…the historical trend of moral progress observed so far on Earth, which is far from being a random walk — see [6] for an excellent defense of this point.
I don’t think this specific part is too important for AI alignment, but worth discussing:
I don’t think “far from being a random walk” is as obvious as you seem to think it is. From my perspective, maybe it’s true, maybe not, I’m not sure. I don’t think the link makes a convincing argument. Here are some reasons for caution:
There’s an aspect of “painting the target around the arrow”. We have more liberal values than in the past, therefore we say “moral progress is far from being a random walk, it trends towards liberal values”. But in an alternate reality maybe we have less liberal values than in the past, and would say “moral progress is far from being a random walk, it trends away from liberal values”. In other words, even if there’s a random walk, it’s easy to tell a nice-sounding story in which it’s not random, because we have the benefit of hindsight.
Arguably there’s as few as one data point, because of increasing globalization. For example, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in Japan is not independent of the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the USA.
I think there are a lot of degrees of freedom in the story we can tell—so many degrees of freedom that it’s not a priori surprising that a good story exists. Why aren’t we talking about Russia and Poland and Hungary and Trump? Why aren’t we talking about how acceptance of homosexuality was very high in ancient Rome, then went down, then went back up? Or how treatment of farm animals is at historic lows? Why are we talking about liberal values and not honor or loyalty or whatever? Why are we talking about population-weighted trends, as opposed to treating each “culture” as a data point or something else? Why are we emphasizing the trend, rather than emphasizing the diversity?
How do we know that the story isn’t “different cultures drift around between more liberal and more conservative values, but liberal WEIRD values happen to be more conducive to economic growth, and then everyone is impressed by how rich those people are, and thus start copying them? (And then we would extrapolate into the future that morals will evolve towards whatever is most conducive to economic growth, as opposed to whatever is best-upon-reflection or whatever.)
I think it’s a good idea to clarify the use of “liberal” in the paper, to avoid confusion for people who haven’t looked at it. Huemer writes:
When I speak of liberalism, I intend, not any precise ethical theory, but rather a certain very broad ethical orientation. Liberalism (i) recognizes the moral equality of persons, (ii) promotes respect for the dignity of the individual, and (iii) opposes gratuitous coercion and violence. So understood, nearly every ethicist today is a liberal.
If you don’t find the paper convincing, I doubt I’ll be able to give you convincing arguments. It seems to me that you are considering many possible explanations and contributing factors; coming up with very strong objections to all of them seems difficult.
About your first point, though, I’d like to say that if historically we had observed more and more, let’s say, oppression and violence, maybe people wouldn’t even talk about moral progress and simply acknowledge a trend of oppression, without saying that their values got better over time. In our world, we notice a certain trend of e.g. more inclusivity, and we call that trend moral progress. This of course doesn’t completely exclude the random-walk hypothesis, but it’s something maybe worth keeping in mind.
if historically we had observed more and more, let’s say, oppression and violence, maybe people wouldn’t even talk about moral progress and simply acknowledge a trend of oppression, without saying that their values got better over time.
In a (imaginary) world where oppression has been increasing, somebody could still write an article about moral progress. Such an article would NOT say “Hey look at this moral progress—there’s more oppression than ever before!!”, because “oppression” is a word you use when you want it to sound bad. Instead, such an article would make it sound good, which is how they themselves would see it. For example, the article might say “Hey look at this moral progress—people are more deeply loyal to their family / race / country / whatever than ever before!”
As another example, one presumes that the people leading honor killing mobs see themselves as heroic defenders of morality, and could presumably describe what they’re doing in a way that sounds really morally great to their own ears, and to the ears of people who share their moral outlook.
I get what you mean, but I also see some possibly important differences between the hypothetical example and our world. In the imaginary world where oppression has increased and someone writes an article about loyalty-based moral progress, maybe many other ethicists would disagree, saying that we haven’t made much progress in terms of values related to (i), (ii) and (iii). In our world, I don’t see many ethicists refuting moral progress on the grounds that we haven’t made much progress in terms of e.g. patriotism or loyalty to the family or desert.
Moreover, in this example you managed to phrase oppression in terms of loyalty, but in general you can’t plausibly rephrase any observed trend as progress of values: would an increase in global steel production count as an improvement in terms of… object safety and reliability, which leads to people feeling more secure? For many trends the connection to moral progress becomes more and more of a stretch.
I don’t think this specific part is too important for AI alignment, but worth discussing:
I don’t think “far from being a random walk” is as obvious as you seem to think it is. From my perspective, maybe it’s true, maybe not, I’m not sure. I don’t think the link makes a convincing argument. Here are some reasons for caution:
There’s an aspect of “painting the target around the arrow”. We have more liberal values than in the past, therefore we say “moral progress is far from being a random walk, it trends towards liberal values”. But in an alternate reality maybe we have less liberal values than in the past, and would say “moral progress is far from being a random walk, it trends away from liberal values”. In other words, even if there’s a random walk, it’s easy to tell a nice-sounding story in which it’s not random, because we have the benefit of hindsight.
Arguably there’s as few as one data point, because of increasing globalization. For example, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in Japan is not independent of the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in the USA.
I think there are a lot of degrees of freedom in the story we can tell—so many degrees of freedom that it’s not a priori surprising that a good story exists. Why aren’t we talking about Russia and Poland and Hungary and Trump? Why aren’t we talking about how acceptance of homosexuality was very high in ancient Rome, then went down, then went back up? Or how treatment of farm animals is at historic lows? Why are we talking about liberal values and not honor or loyalty or whatever? Why are we talking about population-weighted trends, as opposed to treating each “culture” as a data point or something else? Why are we emphasizing the trend, rather than emphasizing the diversity?
How do we know that the story isn’t “different cultures drift around between more liberal and more conservative values, but liberal WEIRD values happen to be more conducive to economic growth, and then everyone is impressed by how rich those people are, and thus start copying them? (And then we would extrapolate into the future that morals will evolve towards whatever is most conducive to economic growth, as opposed to whatever is best-upon-reflection or whatever.)
I think it’s a good idea to clarify the use of “liberal” in the paper, to avoid confusion for people who haven’t looked at it. Huemer writes:
If you don’t find the paper convincing, I doubt I’ll be able to give you convincing arguments. It seems to me that you are considering many possible explanations and contributing factors; coming up with very strong objections to all of them seems difficult.
About your first point, though, I’d like to say that if historically we had observed more and more, let’s say, oppression and violence, maybe people wouldn’t even talk about moral progress and simply acknowledge a trend of oppression, without saying that their values got better over time. In our world, we notice a certain trend of e.g. more inclusivity, and we call that trend moral progress. This of course doesn’t completely exclude the random-walk hypothesis, but it’s something maybe worth keeping in mind.
There are people who like oppression: they call it “order”.
In a (imaginary) world where oppression has been increasing, somebody could still write an article about moral progress. Such an article would NOT say “Hey look at this moral progress—there’s more oppression than ever before!!”, because “oppression” is a word you use when you want it to sound bad. Instead, such an article would make it sound good, which is how they themselves would see it. For example, the article might say “Hey look at this moral progress—people are more deeply loyal to their family / race / country / whatever than ever before!”
As another example, one presumes that the people leading honor killing mobs see themselves as heroic defenders of morality, and could presumably describe what they’re doing in a way that sounds really morally great to their own ears, and to the ears of people who share their moral outlook.
I get what you mean, but I also see some possibly important differences between the hypothetical example and our world. In the imaginary world where oppression has increased and someone writes an article about loyalty-based moral progress, maybe many other ethicists would disagree, saying that we haven’t made much progress in terms of values related to (i), (ii) and (iii). In our world, I don’t see many ethicists refuting moral progress on the grounds that we haven’t made much progress in terms of e.g. patriotism or loyalty to the family or desert.
Moreover, in this example you managed to phrase oppression in terms of loyalty, but in general you can’t plausibly rephrase any observed trend as progress of values: would an increase in global steel production count as an improvement in terms of… object safety and reliability, which leads to people feeling more secure? For many trends the connection to moral progress becomes more and more of a stretch.